El Gastrónomo Vagabundo is part of the mobile food truck revolution that’s sweeping North America.

Tamara Jensen takes an order from the side of the El Gastronomo Vagabundo gourmet taco truck at Flat Rock Cellars winery in Jordan. She and partner Adam Hynam-Smith run the truck Fridays through Sundays.

The couple — he’s a chef, she studied forensic psychology — is part of the mobile food truck revolution that’s sweeping North America.

The only catch? The El Gastró duo is stationed in Canada, where red tape makes it tough for wannabe mobile trucks to rove. So for now they’re cooking from the edge of the parking lot at Flat Rock Cellars and planning how to get moving.

“We need to fight this thing — we want people to sign a petition,” says Hynam-Smith. “We want to make it so if you’re doing something different, something healthy and good for your city, city councils will actually let you.”

Their first battleground will be St. Catharines, where they live. They’re preparing a petition. After that, they might take on Toronto.

“There are a lot of people who want to eat this kind of food off the street,” points out Hynam-Smith, an Australian who runs a catering company called Peapod Cuisine with his Canadian partner Jensen.

The curbside cuisine movement is backed by a ravenous public. It’s sweeping America, where people are drawn to the recession-friendly pricing and chef-driven meals made from local ingredients.

Canadians can only look enviously at cities like Los Angeles, Portland and New York, where small trucks and mobile carts roam the streets alerting customers to their locations via Twitter and Facebook.

“The new breed of lunch truck is aggressively gourmet, tech-savvy and politically correct,” wrote Katy McLaughlin in “Food Truck Nation” in The Wall Street Journal last year.

“Sure it’s fast food, but without the corporate bondage and universal homogeneity,” wrote Bon Appétit in an article about food carts in Portland, Ore., a city CNN recently ranked as the world’s top in street food.

Of course, every city — American or Canadian — has street food rules. Vendors must meet food safety requirements. Licenses and permits are often limited or not available. Parking is problematic: some municipalities will allow it on private property, others require permits to use public parking spots.

Toronto’s street vendor system is dire need of an overhaul. We have roving ice cream trucks and stationary chip trucks, plus a glut of hot dog vendors and six progressive vendors who’re struggling to survive in the city’s à la Cart program.

The goal of that project, which began in 2008 with 15 slots, was to bring nutritious, diverse food to the streets. But the three-year pilot program has languished under heavy-handed city meddling.

All Canadian eyes are now on Vancouver’s “2010 Street Food Experiment.” In June, the city picked 17 winners (from 800 applicants) in a street vendor lottery, creating spots for 12 new carts and five curbside truck locations to open as soon as July 31 of this year. Only one vendor was able to open that quickly: Roaming Dragon serves pan-Asian fried rice, short ribs and pork buns.

Back in Ontario, Toronto-based chain Smoke’s Poutinerie takes its eye-catching branded truck to catering events, like weddings, birthday parties and corporate functions. “Smoke’s on Wheels” can also feed festivals, with special event permits. It can’t rove city streets.

Joe Kelsey is keen to get Twirlees Ice Cream trucks going on Toronto streets, but for now the Chatham-based company has trailers in Paris and London, Ont., and ice cream machines in various spots.

Kelsey drove his cone-coloured pilot truck with a sprinkle-topped “ice cream” jutting out of the roof downtown recently for an interview. He was bombarded all along Yonge St. by people demanding ice cream at traffic lights.

“People were floored,” says Kelsey.

Twirlees has a line of real ice cream kept at a temperature that allows it to be soft served. (Most ice cream trucks made soft-serve cones by mixing a flavoured powder with water.) Twirlees’ individually portioned ice cream is put through a special hygienic dispenser where it never touches the equipment.

The truck, featuring cartoon graphics and dummy cones in a display case that lights up purple, is just used for special events.

The El Gastró truck was lucky to connect with Flat Rock Cellars owner Ed Madronich, who was looking for a way to feed customers without diverting its focus with a restaurant.

The truck, custom-built with a commercial kitchen, parks at the winery Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Customers carry their meals to the winery’s green roof patio.

“If we went to the street we’d be doing things a little different,” says Hynam-Smith. “Things would be streamlined to maybe two tacos and one salad. We’d need a minimum of two people to run the truck. It would be even better with three.”

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